So, on my 1952 Olds Super 88, I had my original fuel tank cleaned, sealed, coated etc. I installed an Autometer fuel sender and float in the tank- and a matching Autometer fuel level gauge. I ran brand new wire from the sender to the gauge, grounded the sender to the frame AND body. The gauge is grounded to the body and hot goes to the ignition. It's always been wired like that since I got the car- the gauge pegs full at all times- I tried a different gauge ..Still pegs full.. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong here? I also grounded the tank to the frame..
no idea, but a google search found this - The sounds like the guage is either missing its shunt resistor, the resistor is not the right one for the sender, or the fuel sender circuit is open circuited. There are two coils of wire inside a fuel gauge one that moves the needle right, and one that moves the needle left. the one that moves the needle upscale (right) always has a fixed amount of current flowing thru it to controlled by the resistance of the wire in the coil and a shunt resistor used to match the upscale current to the downscale current controlled by the fuel sender resistance. If theres no shunt resistor, then the current on the upscale coil will be to high and the gauge will slowly go over to full and then stay there. If the tank is empty (0 ohms) the needle might move back towards E slightly when the key is on. To test to make sure its not a bad ground on the fuel sender disconnect the fuel gauge sender in the trunck and ground it to the car body, see if the gauge goes to E, if it does then its your sender's ground cable. To test if its the wiring between the gauge and the sender, ground the wire going to the sender right at the gauge, or at the console connector, if the gauge goes to 0 there but not in the trunk then theres a wiring problem between those points. But it also sounds like your gauges may be wired to a BATT power source, ie one not switched on by the ignition key. There should be no needle movement in either direction with the key off.
I believe rjones35 gave you about as good an explanation as you will get. That said now you need to go back and delete the other thread you started on the same subject 24 minutes after you started this one.
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